End of Chapter 06 Questions

Questions

1. How do you think continued advances in genetic research will influence how we look at our species' relationships with non-human primates in 10 years?

2. How does a classification scheme reflect biological and evolutionary relationships among different primate lineages?

3. Pretend you are at the zoo and are observing a primate exhibit featuring monkeys. What traits could be used to determine whether the exhibit features a New World or Old World monkey species?

4. What factors threaten the existence of nonhuman primates in the wild? What can you do to help save nonhuman primates from extinction? Why is this important for society?

Answers

1. The better we understand DNA the more precisely we can answer questions such as: when did the divergence happen and what have been the environmental pressures adapted to since the divergence?

2. The current scheme is based mostly on taxonomic differences as displayed in the fossil record and by currently living specimens. As DNA gets better understood the differences in DNA can become more important because these differences decisively reflect lineages and what has been adapted to since species divergence.

3. One difference is a prehensile tail, that would be New World. Looking at the shape of the head can also distinguish.

4. One of the biggest threats is loosing wilderness to civilization. We can protect by setting up large parks that preserve wilderness. Another way is to create zoo populations of threatened species that live in "authentic" environments and reintroduce some of those to areas where disasters happen. This is an idea that I came up with for some of my science fiction stories. In those humans are the species being raised and I call the raising areas Neolithic Parks.